Dear Benham,--
My wife expressed a wish that you should have, as a memorial of her, a sealed packet which would be found in her desk.
I hand you the packet precisely as I found it.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur Crampton.
Within an outer wrapper of coa.r.s.e brown paper was an inner covering of cartridge paper, sealed with half a dozen seals. Inside the second enclosure was a small, duodecimo volume, in a tattered binding. Half a dozen leaves at the beginning were missing. There was nothing on the cover. What the book was about, or why Mrs. Crampton had wished that I should have it, I had not the faintest notion. The book was printed in Italian--my acquaintance with Italian is colloquial, of the most superficial kind. It was probably a hundred years old, and more. Nine pages about the middle of the volume were marked in a peculiar fashion with red ink, several pa.s.sages being trebly underscored. My curiosity was piqued. I marched off with the volume there and then, to a bureau of translation.
There they told me that the book was an old, and possibly, valuable treatise, on Italian poisons and Italian poisoners. They translated for me the pa.s.sages which were underscored. The pa.s.sages in question dealt with the pleasant practice with which the Borgias were credited of having destroyed their victims by means of rings--poison rings. One pa.s.sage in particular purported to be a minute description of a famous cameo ring which was supposed to have belonged to the great Lucrezia herself.
As I read a flood of memory swept over me--what I was reading was an exact description, so far as externals went at any rate, of the cameo ring, which I had seen Lilian Trowbridge remove after he was dead from one of the fingers of Decimus Vernon"s left hand. I recalled the frenzied exultation with which she had thrust it on my notice, her almost demoniac desire that I should impress it on my recollection.
What did it mean? What was I to understand? For three or four days I was in a state of miserable indecision. Then I resolved I would keep still. The man and the woman were both dead. No good purpose would be served by exposing old sores. I put the book away, and I never looked at it again for nearly eighteen years.
The consciousness that his wife had spoken to me, with such a voice from the grave, did not tend to increase my desire to cultivate an acquaintance with Arthur Crampton. But I found that circ.u.mstances proved stronger than I. Crampton was a lonely man, his marriage had estranged him from many of his friends; now that his wife had gone he seemed to turn more and more to me as the one person on whose friendly offices he could implicitly rely. I learned that I was incapable of refusing what he so obviously took for granted. The child, which had cost the mother her life, grew and flourished. In due course of time she became a young woman, with all her mother"s beauty, and more than her mother"s charms: for she had what her mother had always lacked--tenderness, sweetness, femininity. Before she was eighteen she was engaged to be married. The engagement was in all respects an ideal one. On her eighteenth birthday, it was to be announced to the world.
A ball was to be given, at which half the county was expected to be present, and the day before, I went down, prepared to take my share in the festivities.
In the evening, Crampton, his daughter, Charlie Sandys, which was the name of the fortunate young gentleman, and I were together in the drawing-room. Crampton, who had vanished for some seconds, re-appeared, bearing in both his hands, with something of a flourish, a large leather case. It looked to me like an old-fashioned jewel case. Which, indeed, it was. Crampton turned to his daughter.
"I am going to give you part of your birthday present to-day, Lilian--these are some of your mother"s jewels."
The girl was in an ecstacy of delight, as what girl of her age would not have been? The case contained jewels enough to stock a shop. I wondered where some of them had come from--and if Crampton knew more of the source of their origin than I did. Wholly unconscious that there might be stories connected with some of the trinkets which might not be pleasant hearing, the girl, girl-like, proceeded to try them on. By the time she had finished they were all turned out upon the table. The box was empty. She announced the fact.
"There! That"s all!"
Her lover took up the empty case.
"No secret repositories, or anything of that sort? Hullo!--speak of angels!--what"s this?"
"What"s what?"
The young girl"s head and her lover"s were bent together over the empty box. Sandys" fingers were feeling about inside it.
"Is this a dent in the leather, or is there something concealed beneath it?"
What Sandys referred to was sufficiently obvious. The bottom of the box was flat, except in one corner, where a slight protuberance suggested, as Sandys said, the possibility of there being something concealed beneath. Miss Crampton, already excited by her father"s gift, at once took it for granted that it was the case.
"How lovely!" she exclaimed. She clapped her hands. "I do believe there"s a secret hiding-place."
If there was, it threatened to baffle our efforts at discovery. We all tried our hands at finding, it, but tried in vain. Crampton gave it up.
"I"ll have the case examined by an expert. He"ll soon be able to find your secret hiding-place, though, mind you, I don"t say that there is one."
There was an exclamation from young Sandys.
"Don"t you? Then you"d be safe if you did, because there is!"
Miss Crampton looked eagerly over his shoulder.
"Have you found it? Yes! Oh, Charlie! Is there anything inside?"
"Rather, there"s a ring. What a queer old thing! Whatever made your mother keep it hidden away in there?"
I knew, in an instant. I recognised it, although I had only seen it once in my life, and that once was sundered by the pa.s.sage of nineteen years. Mr. Sandys was holding in his hand the cameo ring which I had seen Lilian Trowbridge remove from Decimus Vernon"s finger, and which was own brother to the ring described in the tattered volume, which she had directed her husband to send me--"as a memory"--as having been one of Lucrezia Borgia"s pretty playthings. I was so confounded by the rush of emotions occasioned by its sudden discovery, that, for the moment, I was tongue-tied.
Sandys turned to Miss. Crampton.
"It"s too large for you. It"s large enough for me. May I try it on?"
I hastened towards him. The prospect of what might immediately ensue spurred me to inarticulate speech.
"Don"t! For G.o.d"s sake, don"t! Give that ring to me, sir!"
They stared at me, as well they might. My sudden and, to them, meaningless agitation was a bolt from the blue. Young Sandys withdrew from me the hand which held the ring.
"Give it to you?--why?--is it, yours?"
As I confronted the young fellow"s smiling countenance, I felt myself to be incapable, on the instant, of arranging my thoughts in sufficient order to enable me to give them adequate expression. I appealed for help to Crampton.
"Crampton, request Mr. Sandys to give me that ring. I implore you to do as I ask you. Any explanation which you may require, I will give you afterwards."
Crampton looked at me, open-mouthed, in silence. He never was quick-witted. My excitement seemed to amuse his daughter.
"What is the matter with you, Mr. Benham?" She turned to her lover.
"Charlie, do let me see this marvellous ring."
I renewed my appeal to her father.
"Crampton, by all that you hold dear, I entreat you not to allow your daughter to put that ring upon her finger."
Crampton a.s.sumed a judicial air--or what he intended for such.
"Since Benham appears to be so very much in earnest--though I confess that I don"t know what there is about the ring to make a fuss for--perhaps, Lilian, by way of a compromise, you will give the ring to me."
"One moment, papa: I think that, as Charley says, it is too large for me."
I dashed forward. Mr. Sandys, mistaking my purpose, or, possibly, supposing I was mad, interposed; and, in doing so, killed the girl he was about to marry. Before I could do anything to prevent her, she had slipped the ring upon her finger. She held out her hand for us to see.
"It is too large for me--look."
She touched the ring with the fingers of her other hand. In doing so, no doubt, unconsciously, she pressed the cameo. A startled look came on her face. She gazed about her with a bewildered air. And she cried, in a tone of voice which, long afterwards, was ringing in my ears.
"Mamma!"
Ere we could reach her, she had fallen to the ground. We bent over her, all three of us, by this time, sufficiently in earnest. She lay on her back, her right hand above her head; her left, on one of the fingers of which was the ring, resting lightly on her breast. There was the expression of something like a smile upon her face, and she looked as if she slept. But she was dead.